


Blood is thicker than water

by Is_That_Tom



Category: Free!
Genre: But hey its only the first chapter, First Dates, First fic so be gentle, I'm Bad At Tagging, Light Angst, M/M, Nagisa's parents are shitty people, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Other relationships might be added, iDK tho, jk just fuck me up
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-23
Updated: 2015-07-23
Packaged: 2018-04-10 20:01:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4405547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Is_That_Tom/pseuds/Is_That_Tom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nagisa has never really been able to understand his feelings for Rei. And Rei has never quite been able to understand his emotions concerning Nagisa. But sometimes things like that don't need to be understood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood is thicker than water

**Author's Note:**

> So finally here we are. After promising myself that I would start actually writing down my ideas, this is where we end up. I must say i enjoyed writing this and I hope that it is readable. I should be updating this fairly regularly and hopefully writing more. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. I hope you like it!
> 
> Italics are Rei's thoughts

At 17 years old and in peak physical condition, Ryugazaki Rei thought it was slightly early to be having heart palpitations. But as he attempted to slow down the erratic beating in his chest, it just got more out of control.

_This is going to be more difficult than I first thought_

As to the cause of this unwanted yet not completely unfamiliar event, he was presented with only one conclusion. The blond haired devil that had somehow bounded into his life in the first year of high school.

The invitation to dinner, which had been the cause of all this, had been unceremoniously delivered, as many things are when they were said by an unstoppable ball of pure energy. In-between the headbutts that he calls greetings Nagisa managed to form the words that he had been debating about asking Rei all morning, and, Rei, in the panic of trying to extricate himself from the smaller boys deceptively strong death-grip without falling into the pool, and making a fool out of himself in front of Makoto-senpai and Haruka-senpai again, hastily agreed to it. More out of fear of further bodily harm than anything else.

After the invite had been received Nagisa relaxed his grip and proceeded to rattle off the details about where and when. But they fell on deaf ears as Rei was already occupied with his own thoughts, specifically those concerning his relationship with Nagisa. It had always had a certain ambiguity around it but Rei, even with his infinite ignorance of social cues, had noticed that Nagisa treated him differently than most others that he interacted with. Lingering just that little bit longer when their eyes met and smiling just slightly wider at Rei’s laugh, but what had been most surprising to Rei, was the fact that he began to look forward to those moments. The times when their eyes met and the times when he made Nagisa smile, even if it was through his own incompetence, he began to feel his heart flutter and in extreme cases a dusting of pink spread across his cheeks. To which he would proceed to bury his face in his hands and move in the opposite direction from the cause.

But as he was making his way to Nagisa’s house to fulfill the invite all his fascination with this boy did was give him a target for his frustration at not being able to control his own body.

_Little shit_

Recoiling in shock from his own thoughts, he stopped moving completely. After a short internal debate he decided to blame this slip on Nagisa as well.

_Maybe agreeing to this invite was not the best move_

After a heavy sigh he resumed walking.

A few minutes and a leisurely stroll later, he arrived on Nagisa’s street, which was one of the few details he could remember after being assaulted with times, dates and places, his memory was not accustomed to actually remembering things when he was under attack. Unfortunately he couldn’t recall the house number, so he resorted to using trial and error. Sadly this only earned him a couple of doors in his face and confused looks from the majority of others, and one woman calling him ‘sugar’ and inviting him inside. Which he politely denied

Finally when all but the tiniest fraction of his hope, and dignity, remained he knocked on the final door of the street. Later he would be adamant that after having so many doors slammed in his face, the squeal he let out when Nagisa jumped on him was because he was just ready for disappointment and not prepared for Nagisa in general .

“Rei-chan!” Was the exclamation that Nagisa decided to choose as he barreled into Rei’s chest and clung to him, not unlike a small child.

“Nagisa-kun” said Rei as he attempted to loosen the smaller boys arms around his chest, “You shouldn’t jump at people as soon as you open the door” he chided “What if I was someone else?”

“I knew it was you Rei-chan don’t be silly, I could feel your energy” finishing the absurd statement with a wink so Rei wouldn’t launch into a 20 minute long lecture about how ‘you don’t get extrasensory powers when you eat candy floss Nagisa-kun’

“You look really pretty Rei-chan” said Nagisa, looking up at the taller boy with gleaming eyes as he slid both of his hands from around Rei’s chest to cup his hand.  
One of those infernal blushes settled itself on Rei’s face as he looked at the ground and stammered out a noise of gratitude. It was not uncommon for Nagisa to throw out compliments like this but again Rei noticed that the vast majority of the time they were aimed at him. Looking down at Nagisa’s face he saw one of those smiles pulling at the edges of his mouth and for the first time, but most certainly not the last, he felt his heart skip a beat.

After a few seconds of what Rei perceived to be awkward silence but Nagisa just looked content to stare at him, Nagisa made a move for the door and asked “So Rei-chan you gonna come inside or do you like the cold?” he said with a wry smile and a small tug on Rei’s arm

Rei ignored the sarcasm as he had learned to do around Nagisa

“Yes I think warming up would be agreeable” he said with a small nod as he allowed himself to be pulled through the door into the hallway. In the light he was able to examine Nagisa more, and to his dismay he thought that the smaller boy qualified for the title ‘cute’, Rei could feel the blush returning. He was wearing a maroon hoodie that was almost a perfect match for his eyes in colour but it looked about 4 sizes too big and hung almost to his knees, and a pair of what looked like well worn sweatpants. This all added to his ‘fuzzy’ appearance and also added to this cursed blush that appears to never abate and is determined to make any interaction with this boy seem flustered.

“Rei-chan are you feeling okay? you look kinda red” Nagisa questioned him with concern in his beautiful-but completely normal that hold no power over me oh god why is he still staring-eyes.

“Of course I’m okay, it’s just the cold, that’s all” Rei replied quickly attempting to move the conversation along. Thankfully Nagisa relented and motioned for Rei to follow him. Dutifully kicking off his shoes before he entered, he allowed himself to be led by Nagisa who was still clutching his hand and pointing animatedly around at different doorways, and then proceeding to set out the plan for the night, they were still stood in the hallway but Rei was caught up in a different world, and in that fleeting moment only one word came to mind when he thought about the slightly disheveled looking boy in front of him.

_Beautiful_

He was snapped out of his reverie by a gentle tug on his hand, thankfully his mind only lingered on that thought long enough to become internally embarrassed.

“Rei-chan, are you sure your okay? You seem distracted” Nagisa said with a pouty face that would put a 5 year old to shame.

“Yes quite sure, I was just thinking” Rei replied as he scrambled for a topic that would take him away from his realization and prevent more possible blushes “This house is unusually big for one so close to the centre of town; what do your parents do for a living?” Rei queried, he was genuinely interested as his home was somewhat smaller and just as close to the centre.

While he was inquiring about the nature of Nagisa’s parents’ occupation he had been led into an empty living room. Skimming his eyes round he noticed a large amount of framed pictures on the walls, a few were of the family as a whole but curiously there were almost none that had Nagisa’s father in them, and the majority were of his 3 sisters at various ages.

The colours overall were muted but not welcoming, with a thick cream carpet, two leather sofas facing each other, and white walls, that were almost painful to look at in the glare from the lights in the centre of the room. It had a cold almost standoffish feeling too it.

Still stood in the doorway after Rei had sat down on one of the sofas Nagisa looked round the room and tutted

“I’ve always hated this room” he said as he turned down the dimmer switch next to the door. The lighting slowly became bearable without the use of protective eye wear but it still kept some sort of quiet edge.

Slipping down the front of the opposite sofa to sit on the floor, Nagisa looked up at Rei and seeing that the pictures had captured his attention, it gave Nagisa time to study his face, not that Nagisa would admit it but he enjoyed looking at Rei when he wasn’t aware. As creepy as that sounded it was because Rei always seemed to throw walls up whenever they spoke, and because of Nagisa’s own disarming demeanor it wasn’t something that he had to deal with very often. But he wished he knew how to make Rei understand that he wanted to know more about him than just his towering intellect, Nagisa wished that he could relate to the blue haired enigma with more than just overly dramatic hugs and compliments.

Finally when his attention shifted back to the cross legged blond he looked expectantly as if he was waiting for something

“Something wrong Rei-chan?” Nagisa asked with a quizzical expression

“Ah my apologies, what do your parents do for a living?” he reiterated with a small smile on his face. Thankfully he finally looked more relaxed as he lent back onto the sofa.

“Well, before I was born and it was just my 3 sisters and my parents, my mother worked at a nearby elementary school as a teacher. She’s told me that she loved her job but when I was born she decided to give it up, around the same time she became pregnant my father broke away from the corporation that he was working at” Taking a second to clear his throat and shift up to sit on the sofa himself he continued  
“And he decided to start his own business, I think he works in I.T solutions but I don’t try to understand it.” He flashed Rei an apologetic smile. “But since then he’s had to work for longer and further away, so I don’t really see much of him.”

The natural light and energy that Nagisa usually gives off, which most of the time can’t even be contained, wavered slightly.

“He had to work really hard to get me through middle school because his company was so small at the time, you know I went to a private one right?”

At this Rei gave a small nod, almost shivering at the memory of Nagisa begging Haru, Makoto and himself to hide him from his parents, who had threatened to take him off the swim team if his grades didn’t improve. After he had recounted what happened in middle school and why he was allowed to go to Iwatobi high it was the lowest point Rei had ever seen Nagisa. Since that day Rei had done his utmost to make sure that Nagisa was never behind on his studies. As much as he was confused about his feelings toward the boy currently sitting opposite him. He knew that they were clear enough in the fact that he didn’t want any misfortune to befall Nagisa but if they were the feelings of a friend just looking out for another friend of something…more he could never figure out.

“Well the fees for this middle school were really high and my parents were angry that I wasn’t doing well, they didn’t understand how I felt at the time but they didn’t want it to happen again so that’s why they let me go to Iwatobi high ,but that’s a different story, I think they wanted me to grow up like my dad and that’s why he worked so hard to keep me in that middle school and why he was angry I didn’t go to a private high school, they said things about me not having a goal in life, and that they wouldn’t forgive me until I started improving. I was in middle school at the time what was I supposed to do.”

Nagisa’s face suddenly went unnaturally pale and Rei swears he saw one of his hands shaking.

“So in the end I just…”

Looking down at the floor Nagisa mumbled

“stopped.”

The room was quiet for a few long moments and Rei was almost frozen in place, he wanted to reach out and just do…anything, just anything, he never wanted Nagisa to look like that again.

“Sorry Rei-chan, you only asked about my parents jobs, I didn’t mean to say all that stuff.” Nagisa said as he looked up at Rei with a blank face. As Rei was about to move closer to the defeated looking boy, he heard shuffling outside the closed door.

“Nagisa! Where are you?” Shifting his eyes to the door and quickly smoothing his face over, the paleness immediately leaving and a smile spreading across his lips.

“I’m just in here Mother, Rei-kun arrived and I was just making him at home” The door swung open and a shadow stood in the doorway

“Ah Nagisa you should have called me.” She said giving her son a reproachful look.

“It’s wonderful to meet you Ryugazaki-kun” she smiled at Rei, and of all the things it could’ve reminded him of, the closest thing he had seen to it was this room. Cold, stark and unwelcoming. It never quite seemed to reach her eyes

“Please call me Rei.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
